


Where Do You Go When You Don't Have A Heart

by Defying_Expectations



Category: Dexter (TV), Dexter Series - All Media Types
Genre: Adoptive Siblings, Angst, Angst and Feels, Dark, Denial of Feelings, Dysfunctional Family, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Family, Family Feels, Hurt/Comfort, Multi, One Shot Collection, Other, Possibly Unrequited Love, Protective Siblings, Siblings, Sort of incest?, Unrequited Love, sort of consang?, sort of romance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-29
Updated: 2020-12-25
Packaged: 2021-03-10 05:47:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,245
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27769270
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Defying_Expectations/pseuds/Defying_Expectations
Summary: A collection of unrelated Debra/Dexter one-shots.
Relationships: Debra Morgan/Dexter Morgan
Comments: 3
Kudos: 9





	1. New Hopes

**A/N:** Meant to take place immediately after the season seven finale.

* * *

"Where are we going, Dexter?"

They sit on the sand, knees balled to chests and celebratory beers in hands. It is the New Year, after all. New hopes, new beginnings, new lies to start telling herself – oh, fucking hell.

Her shoes are off, her toes curled into the surf. Dexter looks at her feet instead of her eyes and she wonders what's inside her gaze, what he's afraid to confront.

"I guess – after this – home," he says. "You can stay at my place tonight, if you don't want to be alo – if you'd like to."

She takes a fistful of sand and drops it slowly into the water, watching the sea carry away the grains. "That's not what I meant. I mean after – this. All of it. After . . . life."

She feels him trying to make eye contact now, but she stays focused on the grains dribbling away with the surf, on burying her feet in the sand. On keeping herself whole.

"You mean – once we're dead," Dexter tries to clarify.

"Yeah."

"You know I'm not a religious person, Deb," he says on an exhale. He falls backwards, letting his back hit the sand, his knees still propped up.

"I know," she replies. "Me either. I've never bought into heaven or hell or reincarnation or anything beyond a decomposing body. But if there's not any sort of resolution – retribution . . ."

She drags the grains of sand across her knees. "I don't know if I can bear that. That there's no justice beyond for what we do here."

Once she had believed that justice in the afterlife was not needed, that this world is all that exists and that this world is enough. Now she knows better.

Dexter remains supine but turns his face towards her. She meets his gaze, unafraid. "People like me need to get our deserved punishment somehow, after all," she says, "and it sure fucking won't happen here on Earth, so – "

"Hey, easy," says Dexter, propping himself on one elbow. "Deb – you're a good person."

Her hand clenches tight around the sand and stops its flow to the ground. That's what Laguerta said to her too. Dexter winces as he realizes his mistake. "I didn't mean to – look, who are we to say what's just and what's not, or what's deserved? Morality was invented so people wouldn't live in complete chaos. It only has the value we give it. So really, at bottom our morals are . . . meaningless. Founded on nothing."

She snorts, clawing both fingers and toes into the sand, anchoring herself to reality. "Don't go all Nietzsche on me now, Dexter."

"I'm not – I just . . ."

But he doesn't seem to know how to finish and she doesn't harp on it. Instead, she pulls a necklace from her pocket and sifts it between her fingers as she did the sand, a soothingly repetitive movement.

Dexter jerks towards her then recoils when he sees the necklace's pendant. She would probably laugh if she remembered how. "Deb – when did you – why did you – " _You fucking idiot_ , his eyes scream, but her brother's too adjusted to his daily persona of amiability to ever say something so rude aloud.

"I won't get caught, Dex. I know how the law works. We cleaned up all the evidence well. And – I wanted to keep it." She closes her fist over Laguerta's cross tightly, imprinting the pendant to her flesh. "I never asked Laguerta about her religion. How she practiced, or what it meant to her." She clutches the necklace tighter and feels the chain bite her skin. "I hope she's in heaven now."

He runs a hand through his hair, not seeming to know how to reply. "So you do – believe in an afterlife?"

"No. I don't believe in heaven or hell, but I hope for them. I don't believe in justice either, but I hope for it. That probably doesn't make sense, does it?"

"As much sense as anything else makes on Earth," he replies, and it isn't funny, what he says, but she finds laughter choking her throat. Strange, she never remembered humor being so painful.

Dexter reaches up a hand and touches her cheek and she chokes again, in surprise and confusion and – she hates herself for feeling any sort of happiness tonight, but she can't deny its presence - delight. He's wiping away her tears. She hasn't realized she is crying until now.

Then her body pitches forward and lands on top of his, knocking him on his back into the sand, her mouth falling on his not with greed or caution but simply the need for something solid, dependable, something that does not rest solely on intangible and threadbare hopes –

Dexter pushes her away with the lightest of touches and yet she goes reeling backwards, sprawling loose-limbed on the sand. "Deb, please. Don't – "

He doesn't finish and she doesn't answer as she stares, immobile, up at the stars – but she won't do try again, not ever again.

It's pointless to hope for anything.

* * *

**A/N:** Reviews are love.


	2. Phantom Terrors

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Debra can't wake up from her nightmares, and Dexter can't figure out how to make her nightmares stop. Takes place during the missing months between seasons seven and eight.

They have shared a bed for sixty-three nights now. Every night since Maria LaGuerta's death.

(Dexter never uses the word murder, but Debra does.)

They have shared a bed for sixty-three nights. Not in a euphemistic or sexual sense. Each night, they only ever sleep.

Or rather, each night, he is throttled from his already-uneasy sleep by her excruciating nightmares.

She can't ever seem to wake herself from them. He isn't really sure how that's possible, seeing as her subconscious forays frequently bleed into her physical being. Sometimes, the nightmares convulse through her limbs with deliberate cruelty. Sometimes, the phantom terrors tremble down her spine, drawing inhuman keens from her parched mouth.

Sometimes, to draw her fully back into the land of the waking, all he must do is place a few taps upon her shoulder. Sometimes, he must call out her name.

More often than either of them wish to admit, he must haul her upright, cradling her to his chest with one arm supporting her head and the other restraining her arms. When he does not do this – when she gets caught in that brutal moment between sleeping and waking – she lashes out like a starved animal. Tries to tear them both to shreds with just her fingernails. To claw out their eyes and blind them to their own monstrosities.

Each time Debra is finally ripped away from slumber, her breaths shuddering against his collarbone, she gasps out, "Fucking hell." Each time, her hands shove against his chest while her fingers clutch the cotton of his nightshirt. Simultaneously trying to escape from and burrow deeper in his grasp.

Each time, after overcoming her struggle against herself, she hurtles away from him and leaps from the bed to pace before the window. Each time, in frantic cadence to her footsteps, she mutters some variation of what has become her perverse mantra:

"You gotta stop doing this, Dex. You know – waking me up, coddling me out of the nightmares. You gotta let me learn how to protect myself."

Each time, neither of them mention that it is she who chooses to return to his bed every single night.

What happens next each night varies. Dexter knows that, whatever protests his little sister might verbally make, she wants nothing more in the moments after being freed from the nightmare's clutches to be coddled. To talk about the terrors she sees each night behind her eyelids, to be reassured that the conjures of her mind have no basis in reality, to be held and loved and told she is okay and everything will be fine.

Or something along those lines. He isn't sure precisely what she wants because he has never understood how to provide a false sense of comfort. How anyone could be reassured by a seamy bed of lies.

Instead, Dexter opts for solidity. Objects rather than feelings, tangible belongings rather than twistable words. Glasses of warm milk. Dream catchers above the headboard. Aromatic fragrances in the air freshener plugged into the wall socket. Blasting _We Are The Champions_ through his speakers (but not loud enough to wake Harrison, of course). Tea made of valerian root. Worry dolls to whisper individual fears to and then tuck beneath a pillow, out of sight. Browsing through late night shopping channels. Vodka.

Each time, he dares to hope against hope that something might help her.

Tonight, Dexter retrieves a tealight candle from his closet, sets it upon his nightstand, and lights the wick.

"What the fuck is this?" Debra snorts as she paces, shattering his nonexistent hopes. "A vigil? Are we in mourning for the loss of tonight's shitty dreams? Grieving that I'm not once again reliving LaGuerta's murder at my fucking hands?"

"It's just a candle," says Dexter. "Don't read so much into it."

"Well, what're you lighting it for? You look ridiculous in this jaundice-yellow candlelight. You look like a fucking jack-o-lantern."

Dexter looks at his sister. She has yanked back the curtains from his window, throwing a silvery glow over her waxy face, her hollowed cheeks. She's lost too much weight over the past sixty-three days.

If he looks like a jack-o-lantern, then she looks like a skeleton with flesh still clinging to its bones. But he does not want to tell her this.

"I thought we could use a light," he says instead. "It's pretty dark in here."

Debra snorts again and stops her pacing long enough to fling open the window. The flame flickers in the dry summer breeze. "No kidding. That's what it looks like in a room where people are trying to sleep."

"Yes," he agrees, cupping a hand over the flame to protect it from the wind, "but we spend too much time in darkness, you and I."

She snorts once more, but there is a new edge of hysteria to the sound. "Fucking poet, you are."

She lifts the window higher; he shields the candle from her angry drafts with both hands.

"Stop protecting the fucking thing!" she yells at him. "It's a candle, for Christ's sake! Why don't you show so much care towards anything else in your fucking stupid life?"

Dexter's hands spasm at her words and he swears as his middle finger grazes the flame. He leaps up and runs to the kitchen to let cool water fall over his skin.

The faucet is still running when Debra enters. Her waxy skin is ashen now, and like a prayer or a penitence, she holds the tea candle between her fingers without its stand. Letting the wax drip over her fingers.

"I closed the window," she mutters, perching atop his kitchen counter.

He nods in understanding. It is the closest thing to an apology that either of them knows how to do.

Debra places the candle beside her. Wipes the wax from her fingers onto a paper towel. They watch the tiny flame swell and dance in the silence of the kitchen.

"I try to protect the candle's flame," says Dexter slowly as he turns off the water and takes a seat beside her, "because I know that I can't protect anything that really matters to me."

Debra takes his burned hand in her own. Holds it close enough to the candle to examine the skin, but not close enough to reinjure him. "It isn't a bad burn. Should be healed in a few days." Her hand drops into her lap, but his hand is still cradled inside of her fingers. "Thanks for – thanks for lighting it."

"Thanks for lighting up my own skin?" he asks.

She elbows him. "Shut up. No. I meant the candle."

He nods. Struggles over his next words. "I know there won't ever be enough light to clear out all the dark. But I have to try," he tells her. _For you_ – but he does not say this aloud either.

With her free hand, she picks up the tea candle. With her other hand, she laces their fingers together, and they return to bed. Before she lies down, she puts the tea candle back inside its holder upon the nightstand.

They sleep through the rest of the night.


	3. One More Kiss

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A brief moment between Debra, Dexter, and Harrison. Occurs sometime during season six.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one is super on the short side. I was really torn whether it belonged in this collection or my 'all things Dexter' drabble collection, but I think thematically it fits better here.

"One more kiss before I go, Harrison?"

Harrison grins toothily up at her and willingly presses his lips to her cheek,.

"Stop being a bad influence, Deb," says Dexter, meandering in. "Bedtime means sleep, not stay awake."

"I know," smiles Deb. "Sorry."

She helps Harrison lie down and tucks his blankets securely around his body before exiting, closing the door softly behind her.

"Thanks for watching him tonight," says Dexter from the couch, beer in hand. "Had to finish up some bloodwork that Masuka'd procrastinated on."

"Don't mention it," says Deb. She crosses to the doorway then stops, hovering, waiting. Dexter notices.

"Oh, sorry – feel free to grab a beer for yourself."

Deb smiles at his words even though they make her heart hurt. She's never felt the need to ask before raiding her brother's fridge. That's hardly the reason she's still here. She fingers the doorknob, watching the back of his head. It's always the things she really needs that she's unable to take for herself, or even ask for.

"I'm good, thanks," she says.

"Well, g'night," says Dexter.

_One more kiss before I go?_ she burns to ask.

"G'night," she replies instead, and leaves without a backwards glance.

* * *

**A/N:** Reviews are love.


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